Carlton Blues odds

The Carlton Football Club is one of the traditional powerhouse teams in Australian footy. The Blues have won 16 VFL/AFL premierships – a record matched only by Essendon.

The last two decades or so have not been especially kind to Carlton. A series of salary cap breaches caught up with the club in 2002, sinking an already-struggling team into serious strife both on and off the field. Some ill-advised personnel changes have not helped (read Mick Malthouse), nor the emergence of the Gold Coast Suns and GWS Giants.

Things went from bad to worse in 2018 as the Blues finished bottom of the ladder with only two wins for the season. But with new recruits coming in and young guns such as Patrick Cripps and Charlie Curnow committed for the foreseeable future, not all hope is lost.

How far can the Blues go in the 2019 AFL Premiership season? Let’s see what the bookies have to say.

About the Carlton Football Club

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Updated Carlton futures odds

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Best Carlton bets for the 2018 AFL season

There are dozens of AFL futures markets for Carlton, but where are they likely to return some real value?

Click on the tabs below to get more analysis on these markets:

• Carlton 2018 premiership betting
  Stranger things have happened, but not bloody often. The Blues are a team in transition and have a long, long way to go before they can be considered even an outside chance of winning their first flag since 1995. To paraphrase Obi Wan Kenobi, this is not the bet you are looking for.
  
• Top 8 betting
  This is an interesting proposition. Common sense says there are maybe a dozen teams or more with better prospects than Carlton, but every year we see one or two sides sneak into the finals equation from nowhere. The pre-season odds are more than good enough to warrant a speculative wager on the Blues to crack the eight.
  
• Brownlow Medal betting
  History says Carlton will have to play finals to have any kind of presence at the Brownlow Medal count. If that is the case, Patrick Cripps and Marc Murphy are the obvious candidates. Cripps will be champing at the bit after missing most of last season, while Murphy’s leadership has gone to a new level in the past two years.
  
• Rising Star betting
  Paddy Dow is among the top crop of candidates for the 2018 AFL Rising Star award. The Geelong Grammar alumnus was selected with pick three in last year’s national draft and should see plenty of game-time in a young and talented Carlton midfield.
  
• Coleman Medal betting
  Goalkicking remains the glaring weakness in a Carlton side that scored fewer points than any other team in 2017. Levi Casboult is the main man up forward, but there is no getting around his well-documented shakes in front of the sticks. If only Josh Kennedy was still a Blue…
  

Carlton 2019 AFL fixture

2018 Carlton squad

Carlton records, stats and history

• Player records
  Most matches: 375 – Craig Bradley (1986-2002)
  Most career goals: 738 – Stephen Kernahan (1986-1997)
  Most goals in a season: 115 – Alex Jesaulenko (1970)
  Most goals in a match: 13 – Horrie Clover (vs. St Kilda, 1921)
  Best and fairest awards: 5 – John Nicholls (1959, 1963, 1965, 1966, 1967)
  
• Team records
  Most wins in a season: 20 (1995)
  Most consecutive wins: 18 (1995-96)
  Highest score in a match: 30.30.210 (vs. Hawthorn, 1969)
  Highest winning margin: 140 (vs. St Kilda, 1985)
  Highest home attendance: 91, 571 (vs. Essendon, 2000)
  
• Carlton history
  The Carlton Football Club was founded in 1864 and soon emerged as one of the powerhouse teams on the Melbourne footy scene. It was a founding member of the Victorian Football Association and won the inaugural premiership in 1877. That success was fleeting, however, and the Blues were among the weakest teams around when the Victorian Football League commenced in 1897.

  Fortunes changed when Jack Worall was elected as club secretary in 1902. The former Test cricketer took an unprecedented hands-on approach with the playing group and led the Blues to three consecutive premierships from 1906 to ’08. Worrall is now widely regarded as the first-ever coach – and one of the greatest – in Aussie rules football.

  The first 15 years of the 20th century were among the most successful in Carlton’s history. Whereas other teams ceased operations during the height of hostilities in Europe, the Blues carried on. They won the 1914 and 1915 flags for a total of five in the space of 10 years.

  Although the years between the wars were light on premiership titles, Carlton remained one of the most competitive and popular teams in the VFL. It was during that time that two of the club’s first superstars emerged: Horrie Clover and ‘Soapy’ Vallence, who kicked over 1100 goals between them.

  As the ’40s faded, so too did Carlton’s on-field presence. The team reached finals only four times between 1950 and 1964, when a boardroom shuffle led to one of the most famous acquisitions in Australian sporting history.

  Ron Barassi had already played in six premierships for Melbourne when the Blues appointed him as captain-coach for the ’65 season. He led them to three consecutive VFL Grand Finals for two famous wins: against Essendon in 1968 and over Collingwood in the storied 1970 decider. This era produced some of the club’s greatest-ever players, including John Nicholls, Alex Jesaulenko, Robert Walls and Sergio Silvagni.

  The rest of the ’70s are best remembered for near-misses and a revolving door of coaches. Happy days returned in the 1979 title match against the Pies, when Wayne Harmes teed up Ken Sheldon for one of the most famous goals in VFL history. They carried that form into the 1980s, winning flags in ’81, ’82 and ’87 to become the most successful club in Victoria.

  The 1990s were tumultuous for a number of reasons. The arrival of a national competition also heralded the dismantling of traditional recruitment zones, meaning Carlton no longer had first dibs on top talents from the strong country leagues of Bendigo and the Victorian Goldfields. They won the 1995 premiership in between grand final defeats in ’93 and ’99, but that period was dogged by a culture of salary cap breaches and backroom dealings that culminated in severe penalties in 2002.

  The Blues have never been the same since. Former captain Brett Ratten had them heading in the right direction and until the board replaced him with Mick Malthouse in 2012. That move proved disastrous at a time when the top draft picks were reserved for expansion clubs in Gold Coast and Sydney. Brendon Bolton took over as head coach in 2015 and began the slow, painful process of rebuilding a club from rock bottom.
  

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